The Dolphins know better than to underestimate a Jets team that embarrassed them last month. (Getty Images)

DAVIE—There are two dangerous games football fans love to play, and coaches highly recommend quitting them.

The first is the annual tradition—taking place as early as April—of going through the schedule and marking down wins and losses. The second is applying the transitive property of equality to use the result of one game to predict another. If the Dolphins beat the Falcons, for example, and the Falcons beat the Patriots, surely Miami will beat the Patriots as well.

Some call that a hobby. Others call it a fool’s errand.

“That’s the worst thing you could do,” Dolphins associate head coach Darren Rizzi cautioned. “Every game is an individual event… There’s a million examples you can give of how that doesn’t work out, so I just think it’s a bad way to look at it.”

This week’s opponent, the Jets, are a prime illustration of why neither of those activities is productive. Predicting which version of this team would show up Sunday for a Week 7 showdown at Hard Rock Stadium (1 p.m., Fox) certainly required several revisions. New York looked like it went into the season intending to tank, and that theory seemed to be confirmed when it lost its first two games by a combined score of 66-32.

The Dolphins wouldn’t admit this if they were thinking it, and perhaps they really weren’t, but many on the outside thought they’d demolish the Jets when they visited MetLife Stadium in September. Before they knew it, they were down 20-0 and scrambling to salvage some shred of dignity with a late touchdown.

Maybe it was a fluke, maybe not. The Jets went on to win their next two, a pair of squeakers against the Jaguars and Browns, and threatened to take down the Patriots before losing by a touchdown last week.

“Every team is good on any particular day,” Dolphins defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh said.

The NFL season isn’t even halfway over, and the forecast on New York (3-3) )has already proven to be way off. If that’s true of the Jets, it’s equally pointless to project what any future opponents will be by the time they roll around on the Dolphins’ schedule.

Miami (3-2) was thought to be heading into perilous stretch of the schedule starting last week against Atlanta, but some of these teams aren’t what everyone expected them to be.

Of the next four opponents, Carolina is the only one currently above .500. Next week’s game at Baltimore doesn’t look so daunting with the Ravens sitting at 3-3, and neither does the Sunday Night Football primetime showcase against the 3-4 Raiders the following week. Looking any farther out than that runs the risk of miscalculating how much a team can change over the course of the season, something divisional opponents realize every year.

“Very common,” Rizzi said. “A lot of things happen. You grow as a team, or you go the other way as a team. Injuries obviously factor in, (and) the bottom of your roster changes. All of those things are going to change. A team in the beginning of the year, as far as November, December goes, it could be completely different.”

That’s been the case for the Dolphins, too. Think how many variables were at play over the course of last season, when they looked dead five games in before reeling off six straight. Then their course veered sharply again when Ryan Tannehill suffered a season-ending knee injury and Matt Moore took over at quarterback.

There are already signs Miami isn’t the same team it was during a dreadful three-week lull that saw the offense produce two offensive touchdowns, and a big showing against the Jets could change the way other teams view the Dolphins coming up on their schedule.